EWC x Rocket League fails to reach potential as French viewers call shots

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The Rocket League section of the recent Esports World Cup 2024 was one of the last to conclude on August 25. Despite a fan-favorite side winning to end its two-year title run, its 99.8K Peak Viewers was much lesser than the season's two Majors and all the European regional qualifiers.

After four days of action, it came down to home favorite Team Falcons taking on Team BDS in the Grand Final. The French side, without a big win since the RLCS 2021-22 - World Championship, finally broke that drought to once again call itself a champion and take home $200,000 out of a total prize purse of $550,000.

  Team BDS won its biggest title since the 2021-22 world championship (Image via EWC on X)   

EWC x Rocket League also hit 972.8K Hours Watched and 36.4K Average Viewers over an airtime of 27 hours, which were pretty decent numbers but not nearly as high as some of the game's most successful competitions. The peak was reached during the summit clash, although there was a Group Stage game that made its way into the most popular matches list.

The Group D Lower Bracket Final between Gentle Mates Alpine and Chiefs ESC ended as the fifth most popular game. With qualification to the Playoffs on the line for one of the eminent teams in the game, viewers tuned in to see if the former could keep its dream alive, but a 0:3 loss to the Australian side ended its journey prematurely.

  EWC x Rocket League – most popular matches and basic viewership stats   

French teams and viewers are known to be vital to the performance of Rocket League tournaments, but that wasn't the case here. Although the winner came from this European nation while Team Vitality made the knockouts, the absence of the fan-favorite Gentle Mates in the Playoffs was a big downer for many fans.

Moreover, another highly followed side, Karmine Corp, was missing from the event itself after failing to get an invite following its EU Regional qualification fiasco. It also didn't make the top three of its region's rankings at the time of the invites being sent, making it a straightforward decision for the organizers not to invite the Kamet0-owned esports organization.

Such was the downturn in interest among French audiences due to the above factors that English got 20% more HW in the cumulative watch time chart, which is not something we see every day. In fact, the language barely accounted for over a quarter of the total share, with Arabic coming in a close third having accrued nearly a fifth of the overall Hours Watched figure.

With the top teams either not participating or going out early, the usual suspects when it comes to top channels were also missing in terms of their impact on the audience reach. While Gotaga streamed for only around two and a half hours as his team got knocked out in the Group Stage, Kamet0 did not live broadcast at all in the absence of his side.

At the end of it all, the EWC x Rocket League was unable to reach the number of viewers expected of it. This also meant that it performed much worse than not only the two Majors held this year but also their European qualifiers, finishing as only the ninth most popular and tenth most watched event in the game this year.

Most popular Rocket League events this year

To conclude, this Rocket League event once again proved how vital French viewership is to the game and how the performances of its most popular teams can alter the dynamics of any tournament. The absence of Karmine Corp and the early elimination of Gentle Mates saw audience interest wane towards the latter stages, ending with an average affair in terms of statistics.